Good teaching is hard to model

I was a school teacher for 8 years, and by my own standards (as well as the feedback from parents, students and principals) I did a pretty good job. Sure, there were aspects of my teaching that, when stacked up against the literature I encountered in grad school, would have been labeled less than exemplary. But I think in most respects I was effective, had a good relationship with the students and parents and my students left my class with a lot more knowledge and skills than they came in with. The problem with all of this is that it occurred within my classroom and was only observed by my students and me. And my students weren't really critiquing my teaching. They were active participants in the process and the reason the teaching was taking place. Contrast this with my current teaching assignment. I teach about teaching. So, when I tell the students they should do  this or that, I need to model this or that. When I was a teacher, I would try implementing this or that, and sometimes would continue using this and completely abandon that. And it ended there. My teaching strategies were the means to an end ... student learning. Now, the end is parallel to the means. I want my students to learn good teaching techniques, but I also feel this pressure to use good teaching techniques in order to teach them. It would be far easier to plan a lecture, flip through some slides and give a test. But it seems to me that the best way to teach certain pedagogical approaches -- say, cooperative learning -- is to design lessons that implement those pedagogical approaches. Additionally, they can't be done in a "community of practice" sense either, where I make some mistakes and we talk about the teachable moments and learn from the things the professor screwed up on. The lessons need to be delivered with precision and completely thought through. I feel at times like I am stuck in some performance assessment nightmare, where I am being judged not only on my knowledge of the content but also by my delivery of the content.

When the preservice teachers have had a chance to participate in the teaching strategy, it seems to me, we have something to talk about. They observed/participated in it, and now we can talk about it in real terms, rather than treating the teaching strategy like some straw man that everyone beats down yet has no real experience with. As my advisor used to say, it's easy to stand on the sidelines and throw rocks, but it's a lot harder to actually do something meaningful and thoughtful. Of course, he was referring to publishing, but it also applies to the art of teaching.

This is all fresh on my mind because I just gave a lecture to my students on how to lecture. My talk was well planned out, and I had a lot of good suggestions for the students. But as I reflected on the class, I was struck that I didn't do some of the things I had told my students they should do when lecturing to students. Strategies such as providing students with a note-taking template and using questioning to check for comprehension and engage the listeners. Basically, I didn't feel like I effectively modeled what I was telling my students they should do in their lectures.

This brings me back to the title. Good teaching is hard to do. It takes a lot of extra time that the teacher will really never get paid for. That never really mattered to me because the standards I set for myself were always higher than those imposed by other people. Good teaching really is hard to do, but it's even harder to model.

Unrolling Prezi

I have dabbled with Prezi a few times, but tomorrow and the next day will be the first time I will use it as a presentation tool in my class. The interface takes some getting used to, but after awhile I found it very simple and now prefer it to the traditional menu format. Of course, the thing that really took some getting used to was how to think in a way that leveraged the affordances of the tool. Prezi enables you to make graphics using shapes, arrows and text. PowerPoint, though I don't use it that much for presentations, has really branded itself on how I approach lectures, talks, etc. After getting past the initial confusion with the tool itself, I had to rethink how to actually design a presentation with it. I kept wanting to default to linear, bullet-pointed lists of information. I don't think my first two attempts are that great, but they are a step in the right direction. I will keep learning this tool, not because I want to replace PPT, but because I want to bust my thinking wide open. This is another example of how technology has imposed constraints on my thinking, rather than supporting my brain's natural way of looking at the world. Prezi still has its limits, but at least it has prompted me to get away from laying down one slide after another and to organize information in a different way. If I can think about new ways of presenting content, I am more likely to see the content in a new and fresh way. Here is an example of something I made today.

From a student's perspective, I think this would be a lot more interesting than PPT, even though it is really much simpler. There is no theme, no background, no images (though they can be added, as well as video and PDFs); just the content. I am also prepared for some of them to complain because PPT has dictated the way they take notes. For people who like to just write down whatever is on the screen, this will be quite frustrating. This may be a case where providing graphic organizers will be helpful. If done well, which mine really isn't, the content becomes the visual. Most people think of their content, then try to create or find a visual to go with it. Using this tool, the content can be arranged and navigated through as a visual. Pretty cool stuff. So, jump in there and give Prezi a try. You may just become a fan. And if you have examples of cool ways to use it, please share.

My Self won't stop following Me

I just browsed a really interesting book on autobiography in education. I plan on finding it at my school's library or through ILL because the Google Book only gave excerpts from each chapter. I have always been a believer in reflective practice in teacher education since my professors made me do it in college. They were successful in indoctrinating me. :) Seriously, self-reflection exposed a lot of "baggage" about my own experience as a student that, if left unexamined, could have led to some less than desirable outcomes as a teacher. In a nutshell, I was the guy who made good grades but never really thought much about what I was learning. I never made trouble for my teachers, but I never really made a difference in my school. I stood out because of my own talents, but I never really stood up for anything. Seth Godin touches on this in an insightful post. Schooling is about learning the ropes and working the system; whereas, learning is about getting it. I don't honestly think I got it until I was a sophomore in college. In many ways, I still don't get it. However, I am content to know the difference between what I get and what I don't get. The things I don't get that I still want to get, I am pursuing. The things I don't get that I don't mind if I never get, I am content to drop them. Or at least shelf them until I have a desire to get them again someday.

OK, enough of that. The reason I brought this up at all is because I am really wrestling with the kinds of things my students should be reflecting on, and how they should be reflecting on them. For me, blogs are great but they don't work for everyone. For me, transparency is OK, but not everyone feels comfortable with it. I want my preservice teachers to have the freedom to admit when they are struggling to find the "teachable moments" in their field experiences, but I want them to look past the schooling game so many of them have played for so long and think about learning. On the other hand, I don't necessarily want to push every student toward the "deeper experience," as one of my online students so accurately put it this summer. Some of them may not be at that point in their learning, and it just adds unnecessary pressure when students think they need to uncover the drama in an experience that was probably pretty bland to begin with. Frankly, my K-12 experience was devoid of very many light bulb or a-ha moments, so a dramatic account of my school days would be predominantly fiction.

This gets me back to the scaffolding issue. With a little modeling, some constructive formative feedback along the way and a clear target for the kinds of things they should be looking for in the classrooms in which they observe or teach, I think reflective practice can be, and is, very effective. I know entire dissertations have been written on this topic, so I haven't even scratched the surface. But it's a timely thing to be thinking about as I start my classes next week.